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Here’s What Your Fabulous Gay Retirement Looks Like

What your fabulous gay retirement looks like

What does your fabulous gay retirement look like? Explore the possibilities here on this episode. Then download your FREE Queer Money Kickstarter, a 9-step Guide to Kickstart Your Journey to Financial Independence.

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What your fabulous gay retirement looks like – step one

On this Queer Money®, we’re discussing what your fabulous gay retirement could look like. We’re sharing the first step in turning your nightmares about retirement into a fabulous gay retirement dream. Here is a series of steps to help you to do what we have outlined.

The First step is thinking and dreaming up and realistically considering what is possible for your retirement. Figure out who you are with, where you are, what you will do, and when it will start. The more crystal clear you can get in your mind’s eye of what your ideal retirement looks like for you, the more you can reverse engineer and figure out what it will take to get there. We did this exercise and recently updated it for ourselves based on some new information about our financial and personal options. So, we want to share our process so you can replicate it. 

The second part of the first step is to document your dreams into three buckets. This will allow you to distinguish between basic, happy, and fabulous. Think about what you would do in each of these buckets with the idea of progressively getting more expensive. You’re having more and more income in your retirement. Happy, you have more income than basic, and more income in fabulous than happy. For each bucket, we want you to have a location: a basic location, a happy location, and then a fabulous location. Be detailed about what each will look like.

Now, figure out what activities you would be doing for each of the buckets. Think about what you would do based on the guidelines of each bucket being progressively more expensive or having more income from basic to happy to fabulous. The next step is to determine what your lifestyle will look like. The major expenses for each. Housing, health care, travel, exercise, dining out, for example. Similar to the above while considering that you will have more money in each bucket for each of these expenses. For example, in basic, we’re not really focused on having a car payment or maybe a very small one, whereas with Fabulous, we’re buying a brand new car on a somewhat regular basis. In a later video, we will talk about calculating total expenses and the needed income to achieve each when you’re ready to retire

For example, our location for basic. We would stay here in our duplex in Toledo. We would continue to house hack to keep our expenses lower. In our happy bucket, we would own a condo or a home in Denver with a pool, a garage, and high walkability. In our fabulous bucket, we would own a condo or house in Sitges, our favorite foreign city. It would be within walking distance to the beach and have an ocean view. We would also have a condo or a home in Denver with a pool, a garage, and high walkability.

The next step is to document what your lifestyle will look like. What are some of your major expenses going to have? The ones we came up with for ourselves are housing, health care, travel, exercise, entertainment, dining out, and auto. Notice how, with every bucket, we add a little more.  For example, we love to travel, so in basic, we still have travel listed. However, it is 1-2 times a year. That may mean driving across travel and not flying. In our happy bucket, we travel 3- 5 times a year, and in our fabulous bucket, we travel 5+ times a year. Map each one out to be a little more. Progressively add more expenses.

Our activities in our basic bucket are traveling 1- 2 times a year, exercising like hiking, going to the gym, yoga, wine, and coffee, dining out, and hobbies like reading and cooking. Our activities in our happy bucket are traveling 3-5x a year, exercises like hiking, biking, gym, yoga, dinner parties, theater, concerts, wine and coffee, dining out, and hobbies like glass blowing, reading, and cooking. In our fabulous bucket, we have travel 3-5X a year, exercises like hiking, biking, skiing, gym and yoga, dinner parties, hosting LGBTQ+ events, theater, concerts, collecting art, wine and coffee, hobbies like glass blowing, reading, and cooking, beach and pool time.

Your first assignment is to dream about your dream retirement, create buckets, and document them. This will give you a crystal-clear vision of your retirement. Next week, we will calculate the total expenses and income you need to achieve each of these. Share your questions, thoughts, comments, and findings wherever you catch this episode.

For the resources and to connect with our guests, get the show notes at: https://queermoneypodcast.com/subscribe.

 

 

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